Solent PhD student wins two business psychology awards

Research into how to alleviate the psychological impact of restructuring in the workplace by a Southampton Solent University PhD student has won two prestigious industry awards.

Maddy Petzer, a Human Resources Business Partner for Siemens, has been awarded both the Outstanding Student Achievement award and the Employee Health and Wellbeing award by the Association of Business Psychology (ABP).

As part of her ‘Supporting organisational messengers during redundancy situations’ research she formulated a model to support, train and guide management through the process of restructuring.

Speaking about her work, Maddy said, “To inform my research, I worked extensively to understand the core business challenges and gain an understanding of what drives decision making within business undergoing organisational restructuring. This enabled me to create a management model to assist in the process.”

She began at Solent in 2005 with a Certificate in Personnel Practice before going on to study for postgraduate diplomas, a master’s degree and before undertaking her PhD.

The ABP Workforce Experience Awards focus on demonstrating how applying an understanding of the science of human behaviour can impact workforce experience and deliver commercial and practical value to organisations.

No stranger to awards, Maddy won the Best Senior HR Professional Award for 2013 – awarded by Bond Williams and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) for leading Strategic and Operational Change.

Maddy’s PhD supervision, Dr Graham Benmore, Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management says: “It is pleasing to see that Maddy’s excellent work has been recognised in this way. The awards reflect well on her achievements and also on the high quality of work that goes on in the Business Research Centre.”

Having previously completed her master’s degree in Occupational Stress and studying Industrial, Applied and Developmental Psychology, Maddy decided to focus on a career in the corporate world working in the field of human resources. She complimented her knowledge by qualifying as a Specialist Paralegal in Employment Law in 2008 – achieved with distinction. Maddy is currently employed as a Human Resources Business Partner for Siemens, a multinational engineering and electronics conglomerate company with 13,760 employees in the UK alone and 360,000 world-wide.